Xindaan's photostream  

This picture shows part of the Annapurna Sanctuary in moonlight. The destination of a wonderful trekking tour, I arrived there early November. Hiking up the last part to Annapurna Basecamp (4,130 m/13,500 ft) proved frustrating, as it was snowing heavily (20 cm/8 in) with virtually no visibility at all. I still set my alarm to midnight, removing the ice from the window - and saw mountains. So, out of the sleeping bag, and out into the freezing cold. I went through the fresh snow a bit uphill towards a frequently visiting viewing area. The moon was shining nicely (though ocasionally blocked by the clouds), and chose my composition to use it as my lighting source. I was out there for about two hours (luckily, with warm clothes). I took long exposures up to 16 minutes, short exposures, and this is the one I like best. The clouds were causing shadows that add texture to the area, and the clouds were not covering too much, but still being there.

The view is towards the east, around the prayer flags, you can see the Annapurna Baseamp. The prayer flags point towards Machhapuchhre (Mt. Fish Tail), a wonderfully photogenic peak with 6,993 m/22,900ft. Also visible are Annapurna III (7,555 m/24,800 ft) and Gangapurna (7,455 m/24500 ft). Behind me is Annapurna I, with 8,091 m/26,500 ft the world's 10th highest peak. I took this picture with a 16 mm framing and a panoramic crop, to make use of the scenery.

And that's what I've been up to the past time, causing some absence here.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas 2011!

I have been absent from flickr for a while, the reason were landscapes like this. :)

I spent a few weeks in the Sierra Nevada (again) and had a wonderful time. While the sky didn't have as much clouds as I would have liked, it was better than permanent rain, so I'm not going to complain. :)

This specific picture involved getting up from the campground at Tuolumne Meadows at 4:00 am, driving to Saddlebag Lake and then hiking in the dark to Greenstone Lake, setting up the camera, witnessing the earth shadow lowering, seeing the alpenglow starting - and then almost forgetting to take pictures because it was so beautiful. :) I am still glad that I remembered that, in the end, though.

The Eastern Sierra is wonderful. Being there for three weeks in May was great, and as a side-effect, I got quite some different weather conditions, which altered the mood of landscape quite a lot.

I had scouted this particular place in the Buttermilks during day hikes before and liked the flowers amassing here, which is not that common in the Buttermilks, and intended to use them as foreground with the Sierra as an awesome background. I then returned to the Buttermilks for a few sunrises, and the one morning where I took this picture looked potentially interesting, as the sky to the east was cloudy, but not completely overcast. And indeed, at some point, holes in the clouds allowed the sun to break through, creating a wonderful patterned illumination pattern on the Sierra, and at the same time, the light colour on the mountains is quite close to the yellow of the flowers, which I particularly like.

The weather forecast actually wasn't that good. I got out anyway on that morning in March 2010 to look around Yosemite Valley, when at some point, the sun broke through for a short time, without the mist fully vanishing. I like this picture because of the layers, adding mist in definite steps, rather than a gradual vanishing of a continuous line of objects, with finally El Capitan breaking through while bathed in that wonderful morning light.

On June 25th, the UNESCO added five german regions to the now known as "Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany" World Heritage. This picture was taken in one of them, on Rügen, Germany's largest island (located in the Baltic sea). The weather was overcast and foggy, and I used my 85mm at 1.4, to enhance that feeling by the limited depth of field, rendering the more distant trees unsharp, giving the mist its deserved prominence.